Before she was a journalist, Elizabeth Arnold spent several seasons fishing salmon commercially in her home state of Alaska. In 1985, she began reporting for Juneau’s NPR member station KTOO, covering local environmental and political stories. From 1991 to 2006, she served as a political correspondent out of NPR’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she covered campaigns, Congress and the White House

As children, we were taught sharing is caring. Turns out it’s also good for business. Opportunities abound to monetize goods and services through joint use: Share your apartment with strangers through room rental services like Airbnb. Turn your car into a taxi service. Wait in line for people who are willing to pay to avoid queueing themselves.

Author Michael Pollan discussed the Farm Bill’s far-reaching impact on the U.S. food system and the environment, how journalists can better cover food policy, and more during a visit to Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy. Below are the highlights:

Evidenced by the rapidly growing salmon-farm industry, salmon is one of the world’s most popular fish. The volume of farmed Atlantic salmon increased almost 1,000 percent between 1990 and 2015, according to United Nations statistics; 75 percent of all the salmon we eat is farm-raised. Wild-caught salmon, meanwhile, has become a luxury; it’s harder to find and generally more expensive.

Fires have always burned in the planet’s temperate forests. They hasten regeneration by thinning undergrowth and fertilizing the soil. Before there were humans to flick cigarette butts into the brush, there were lightning storms and cyclical droughts.

Just as nations have different levels of population, industrial and agricultural production, income and education, so they have varied environmental impacts. Such impacts aren’t stable over time: Countries’ use of resources and generation of wastes often rises as production grows, then may fall as cleaner technologies and better environmental practices come into use. While this trend has been theorized, empirical evidence has been mixed.